1. Against my love shall be as I am now,
2. With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
3. When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
4. With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
5. Hath travelled on to age's steepy night;
6. And all those beauties whereof now he's king
7. Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
8. Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
9. For such a time do I now fortify
10. Against confounding age's cruel knife,
11. That he shall never cut from memory
12. My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
13. His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
14. And they shall live, and he in them still green.

Having
regained his equilibrium once more,
after some insane attacks of jealousy, the poet devotes himself again
to
the question of the youth's mortality and the ravages of time against
all
things beautiful. What, he wonders, may be attempted as a means of
holding
Time's swift foot back and restraining his despoliation of beauty?

That is the theme of
this and the next two sonnets.
Here and in 65 the hope is expressed that the black lines of this verse
will provide a form of immortality. In the intervening sonnet, 64,
nothing
is suggested as a palliative, and the only remedy is to weep for what
one
is destined soon to lose.

THE 1609
QUARTO VERSION

63

A

Gainſt my loue
ſhall be
as I am now
With times iniurious hand chruſht and ore-worne,

When
houres haue dreind his
blood and fild his brow
With lines and wrincles,when his youthfull morne
Hath trauaild on to Ages ſteepie night,
And all thoſe beauties whereof now he's King
Are vaniſhing,or vaniſht out of ſight,
Stealing away the treaſure of his Spring.
For ſuch a time do I now fortifie
Againſt confounding Ages cruell knife,
That he ſhall neuer cut from memory
My ſweet loues beauty,though my louers life.
His beautie ſhall in theſe blacke lines be ſeene,
And they ſhall liue , and he in them ſtill greene.

It is
worth noting the personal element in these
three sonnets. Time is not only the universal arch-destroyer, but, what
seems even more heinous, he will cut away my sweet love's
beauty, my
lover's life, he will come and take my love away, he
will snatch
away Time's best jewel (i.e. my beloved) and if my
love shall
still shine bright despite all this destruction, it will only
be through
some miracle yet unknown. Each of the three sonnets passes from the
universality
of wasteful Time's depravity, which attacks and crushes individuals,
wrecks
cities, eats up the land, consumes brass and eternal monuments,
destroys
the flowers of the summer as well as gates of steel and the stoutest
rocks,
and then turns its attention to my sweet love's beauty, my
love, and
Time's best jewel. So all things that are
mortal fade and soon are
no more to be seen. What is the solution? To what must one turn to
avoid
this destruction and loss? Is it to the immortality of verse? Or should
one simply weep and acknowledge that everything which we possess is as
a
death which continues to weep but must dissipate itself eventually into
the great sea of mortality?

This
sonnet shares the same opening words as
sonnet 49. The numbers of the two are important, as they are
climacteric
numbers, and were for the Elizabethans crucial years in a person's
life.
The astrologers were deeply concerned for Elizabeth's welfare in her
63rd
year and foretold numerous disasters. She died in her next climacteric
year
at the age of 70. (See the notes to sonnet 81
for a fuller discussion).

1.
Against my love shall be as I am now,

1.
Against = in preparation for (the
time when)

2. With Time's injurious
hand crush'd and o'erworn;

2. Time's
injurious hand - Time is personified
once again as the reckless destroyer of all things. Of the 126 sonnets
to
the youth, time as the invidious tyrant or fickle cheat appears in 17.
For
the record, the sonnets in which Time is mentioned in a pejorative
context
are 5, 12, 15, 16, 19, 22, 55, 60, 63, 64, 65, 77, 100, 115, 116, 123,
126.
The word does not occur at all in the sonnets to the dark lady.
crushed and o'erworn - the poet perceives himself, having
looked in
his glass in the previous sonnet, as one who is more than past his
prime.
It is worth mentioning that, if the sonnets were written prior to 1600,
Shakespeare would have been 36 at the most. Nevertheless, it is
acknowledged
that the ageing process was more rapid in Elizabethan England than it
is
today, owing to poverty of diet , poor housing and primitive medicine.
A
thirty year old man could therefore consider himself well advanced
towards
old age. In addition it was the necessity of convention that the
addressee
of a love sonnet would be more beautiful and youthful in comparison to
all
earthly things. Therefore those who admired were always, by reflection,
crushed and o'erworn. o'erworn = worn out.

3. When hours have drain'd
his blood and fill'd his brow

3. drain'd
his blood = emptied him of
blood. It was thought that, as one aged, the blood became thinner,
colder,
and that there was less of it. The final act of Time and Death was to
empty
the body of blood completely. fill'd his brow -
since the Q spelling
is fil'd there could be a reference to the use of a
file. The lining
of the forehead by Time with wrinkles was for poets the typical act of
desecration
of beauty which symbolised his (Time's) destructive rage against human
achievement.

4. With lines and wrinkles;
when his youthful morn

4. The
movement from youthful morn to age's
steepy night is very swift, without any intermediate steps. Once
started
on the downward slope there is no stopping. The speed of the decline is
repeated in lines 6-7, where the immortal beauties of youth flash once
before
one's eyes and then vanish. The repeated word vanish
(line 7) gives
the impression of a flickering fire, which flickers briefly and is gone.

5. Hath travelled on to age's
steepy night;

5. travelled
- travail and travel were
the same word in Shakespearian times. See 27, 34, 50. (See Q's
spelling).
Hence 'moved wearily along on its journey'.
age's steepy night - the steep decline of age into night,
darkness and
lifelessness. The word steepy is not a neologism,
and is recorded
by OED before Shakespeare's usage of it. It seems to be synonymous with
steep. There could be a connection with steeping objects in fluids so
that
they become flavoured or imbued with the liquid (in this case with
night).

6. And all those beauties
whereof now he's king

6. wherof
now he's king = over which
he now reigns. The particular aspects or characteristics of beauty
which
the youth possessed were in a sense under his power, as if he were the
ruler
of them all. But like all earthly things power is illusory, and in the
next
line they vanish almost as soon as they make their appearance.

7. Are vanishing, or vanished
out of sight,

7. vanishing
(ed) - the repetition of
the word makes the process more consciously visual. As one looks, the
beauties
so much vaunted, disappear before one's gaze.

8. Stealing away the treasure
of his spring;

8. Stealing
away - has the transitive
meaning of (Time) robbing the youth of all his treasures (his beauty),
and
the intransitive sense of to steal away, in which the beauty of the
youth
creeps away imperceptibly, furtively disappears, before anyone has
noticed
its absence. In the second sense the treasure of his spring
would
be in appostion to all those beauties or his
youthful morn,
or both.

9. For such a time do I now
fortify

9. fortify
= take up a defensive position
by building fortifications. The fortifications become the black
lines
of l.13. The word is also used in Sonn 16: And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
But the fortifications seem woefully inadequate in both cases.

10. Against confounding age's
cruel knife,

10. confounding
= destroying. See Sonn
60, line 8, note. Age and Time were comparable, interchangeable
destroyers,
armed as often with knives as with scythes. Sonn. 100 lists both
weapons:Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife. 100.13-14

11. That he shall never cut
from memory

11. he
= age, time.

12. My sweet love's beauty,
though my lover's life:

12. The use
of my sweetlove's
beauty and my lover's life has proved
difficult for commentators
who are not too keen on open admissions of love between men. It is
clear
that the understanding of the terms love, or lover, differed from that
of
modern times, and there are instances in the plays where men address
each
other or refer to each other in such terms without any emotive content.
But as so often in writing, it is the context which determines what the
words mean. Here, with the sonnet devoted to the means by which
something
precious might be preserved, and so much emphasis being placed on the
admired
beauty of the youth, there is no doubt that love and
lover
mean approximately what they do in modern English, although lover
has
the more general sense of one who is loved, without
the unavoidable
modern overtones of one with whom one has had sex.
There is no doubt
that my love and my lover are
meant to carry the full range
of emotional overtones which any deep love for another person brings
with
it. In John Lyly's Euphues : The Anatomy of Wit,
published in 1578,
Euphues takes as his special friend Philautus, and the two declared
their
love for each other. They used not only one board,
(table) but
one bed, one book (if so be it they thought not one too many). Their
friendship
augmented every day, insomuch that the one could not refrain the
company
of the other for one minute. Lyly. p.19, Leah Scragg ed.

13.
Blackness and beauty seem to be opposites.
Partly it is the blackness of night and oblivion, set against the
brightness
of his youthful morn. Partly it may be that
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; 127.
The blackness of course in this case is that of ink, which here manages
to preserve greeness and vitality, against all the odds.

14. And they shall live, and
he in them still green.

14. And
they shall live - the lines of
verse shall continue to live (when all else is dead). he in
them still
green - he (my love) shall always be flourishing in them
with youth
and vitality.